What are the things you should look for when you choose a home based business? That is a question often asked to me. Now, I’ve tried many different things, made a lot of mistakes, and also I’ve wasted a lot of money online. In my opinion, it is okay to waste money trying new things but when you waste money on things people already tried and failed on, then you’re just being a complete idiot. I’ve failed many times and wasted a lot of money, so learn from my experiences and failure so you don’t need to fail anymore.

So what are the things you should look for when choosing a home based business:

1. A Unique Product

The first thing you should look for in a home business is a business that offers a unique product. You should never join a business that product is already filled with competitors, where the niche is already saturated. Perfect examples for this are vitamins, juices, pills, and lotions, these kinds of products are often found in MLM opportunities.

These kinds of old school marketing niches are bad businesses or products if you want to get a decent amount of income online or a successful business going for a long time.

Now, what you want is a product that appeals to many people but doesn’t have too many competitions yet. When you sell pills to lose fat, you can only sell that to fat people, correct? Try finding a product that can be sold to all people.

2. A Great Support Team And Network

The second thing to look for when you choose a home based business would be a great support network. Unless you’re someone that is an expert on Internet Marketing or you’ve many experiences you would want to choose a home business that offers a great support network that you can rely on when you run into problems and you need solutions.

A great support network would be like a forum, this is the place where you get personal and specific solutions for you problem. A 1-800 number would be perfect, it allows you to call and talk directly with the support team. A personal sponsoring consultant or mentor like me, I often get questions from my members and it’s my responsibility to help them and answer them. So having a personal sponsoring consultant is a great idea. Webinars and live conference calls that is held on a daily basis would be great too, this is the place where you could interact with the other members here.

So when you choose a home based business, make sure that your business has all of those. Those are the things you must look for in a home based business.

3. An Honest Company Management

The third thing would be an honest company management. When you choose a home based business to start on, make sure you know the company management. This is a must when you decided to be on a long term business with the company. You would want to know what type of individual runs the company. A person with a good track of success record and good reputation is someone you want to work with.

Now, you don’t want to wake up one day and watch that your CEO has ran away with all your money in the news.

4. A Great Marketing System

The next one is a great marketing system; this is a really important thing to look for in a home based business. Now, it doesn’t matter if you have the greatest product in the world but you’re not marketing it or you don’t have a great marketing system to help market your product, it’s useless. It’s completely useless because you won’t be making any success or any money if you don’t market your product, which having success is the whole point on why you are in this business.

Now, let me give you an example, my mom makes a better burger than McDonald but McDonald makes billions where my mom don’t make any money. Why? Because my mom never markets her product, that’s why she never make money from making burger.

There are three things you want to look for when choosing a great marketing system:

1. Would you want to do it?

The first thing is you need to ask yourself would you want to do it. Now, you need to know a lot of old school MLM systems actually tell their members to go out and chase their friends and families. Now you ask yourself, do you want to do it? Are you thick skin enough to go and chase people to buy from you? Now even if you are thick skin enough, you would not want to do that for the rest of your life, correct?

2. How would you respond to it?

The second thing is you ask yourself how you would respond to it. If somebody chases after you with that kind of old school marketing method, harassing you until you buy their product or maybe join them in their business, what would you do? Would you buy from them? I don’t think you would. If you don’t even want to buy from people like them, just imagine yourself doing their marketing method, nobody would buy from you.

3. Does it apply leverage?

The third thing is does your company’s marketing system apply leverage? Internet is the biggest leverage of all; 1.4 billions users are on the internet every single day. Your product would be seen by 1.4 billions of users online. Now imagine that kind of leverage. Now, time leverage, for example does your company have a call center that will help you close sales while you’re doing your things? A predesigned website, prewritten emails follow up? So that you can concentrate on doing your things while your marketing system works for you 24/7, these kinds of marketing systems are what you should look for in a home based business.

5. A Global Reach – Making Sales Globally

The fifth thing is global reach. Does the home business have a global reach, meaning you could make sales globally from any part of the world?

For example, when your market has ran out in the U.S, will you be able to sell your products in Europe, Asia, Australia, or any country in the world?

Products like vitamins, pills, lotions, and health products are those that are hard to be sold globally. Every country has its own rules; you will have a lot of hoops to jump through before you’re approved to sell your products in other country.

Information and financial education products are preferable. You can sell them in any country in this world you want. If the product is unable to be sold online then there’s no use in doing a home based business because the strength in a home based business it’s that you’re going to be making money from global sales.

6. A Decent Compensation Plan

The sixth will be a decent compensation plan. A good compensation plan is one that offers a simple to understand, big upfront income, and also a decent residual income built in.

What I meant by simple is that it is easy to understand. When you ran into compensation plan that is so confusing that you can’t understand it then don’t do it, chances are nobody will understand it.

Second, always look for a home based business that offers a big upfront income, about $1,000+ per sale. So that you could quickly get out of your job and re-invest in your business so that you could achieve financial freedom really quick.

After a big upfront income, you’d want a compensation plan that offers a decent residual income. So that you don’t have to work forever but still get paid for what you’ve done before, a lifestyle that you want without having to be bound by your job. I love what I’m doing.

7. Giving Back To The Society

Now last but not least, this is the thing that everybody overlooks and regards it as an unimportant aspect in a business, is your company giving back to the society? Now, every time your company does charity, giving back to the society, donating for social causes, they are indirectly building credibility online and offline.

When people like your company, it will be easier for you to market and sell your products, correct? If you want to receive, first you must learn to give. That may sounds so cliché, but that is the universal law in all business, will it be home based business or brick and mortars.

Now let’s summarize, what are the things to look for when you choose a home based business:

1. A unique product

2. A great support network

3. An honest company management

4. A good marketing system

5. A global reach to sell your products

6. A decent compensation plan

7. A charitable company

If the home business you’re looking for has all that criteria then you’re in good shape. It would be a mission impossible for you to fail in that home business. Now the main reasons I were able to present these advices were of course, I had those experiences. Where do I get it? The company I work with of course.

Before starting any home-based business it’s imperative to ask yourself a few key questions.

The questions have to do with three main areas of business – the business type itself, the products themselves and the services offered. For this article, the home-based business will focus on eco-friendly health and wellness products although most of the questions will equally apply to any product sector.

In terms of the business itself, you may have already decided, after researching the vast amount of data online about home-based businesses, that this is what you really want. Home-based businesses are viable but do require planning and work.

In terms of the products themselves, you may have stumbled across or been told about some amazing new product or discovery or you may have been a user for many years. In either case, you want to share all this ‘good news’ with as many others as possible.

In terms of the services offered, you may be in a position to offer home-delivery, no-question, money-back guarantees or even be the money collector for the supplier.

Let’s look at the first area – the BUSINESS itself. Here are some must-ask questions.

Will I be able to…

Earn residual income as well as make the money up-front?

Be my own boss or CEO? Maybe this is important because you have always worked for someone else and have never been boss. Be careful here – being boss means doing ‘bosses’ kind of work.

Do the work from home? This may be the most important thing because of physical circumstances, transportation limitations and more.

Get sufficient business training when I need it?

Avoid direct selling because I am not a salesperson! That is, will I be using warm and/or cold marketing techniques?

Earn the income while genuinely helping others? This may or may not be important to you. Do you want to just provide products or do you genuinely want to help people improve their health, wellness, lifestyle or whatever by these products?

Will I have to…

Lay out a lot of ‘start up’ money? How much and when in the start-up process?

Carry inventory? Do I have space and do I want to keep boxes of product in my home?

Offer personal satisfaction guarantees? For example, will I be offering the return policy or will the manufacturer be offering the robust return policy?

Purchase the products for my customers and then have to deliver them’?

Be involved in the money exchange?

Now, let’s look at some PRODUCT questions.

Will the product(s) that I am involved with…

Provide a healthier home, body, skin, nutrition etc

Be environmentally ‘friendly’?

Be safe to use for adults, children and even pets?

Use scientifically tested and verified ingredients?

Have a proven track record?

Lastly, I want to look at the area of SERVICES. If you are putting yourself out there as an expert and the CEO of your own, established and creditable business, you should ask yourself the following questions.

Will I or should I be offering…

Membership Protection (if there is a continual membership required) such as auto re-ordering?

Online ordering?

Door to door delivery?

Strong product support from the manufacturer or his representatives?

Strong team support if this is a type of business structure that involves up-links and down-links?

It seems like a lot to think about, but I assure you that these are all important questions to ask no matter what business area you are contemplating.

I have personally found in the eco safe health and wellness products arena, that these are critical questions to ask yourself. And, it is important that you be satisfied with the answers before heading into the world of home-based business.

Slow down, take some time and ask these tough questions. You will be the better off for it.

This is the first in a series of seven articles that tell you how to sift through all the home business opportunities you hear about every day, and find the PERFECT home based business for you.

Are you ready to start making some real money in your own home business without working 60 hours per week? Are you ready to stop throwing your money down the “home business opportunity rat hole”?

Read on and I’ll show you how to test every home based business opportunity to make sure it fits the definition of The PERFECT Home Business, before you invest your time and money. Then, focus on the one that fits the best, and make it a success.

Each letter in the word “P.E.R.F.E.C.T.” stands for one of the 7 keys to finding the perfect home based business. Each key is something your home based business opportunity MUST have in order for you to enjoy the financial freedom and lifestyle you want.

What makes an opportunity P.E.R.F.E.C.T.? The “P” in PERFECT stands for “Profitable”. If your business isn’t profitable, why do it? If it isn’t highly profitable, you won’t be able to earn enough to make it worth your time, or you won’t be able to grow your business by reinvesting your profits back into the business.

“Profitable” means:

• High gross profit margin (preferably greater than 65%) and net profits of 20% of sales or better before taxes.

If you sell something for $1.00 and it costs you $.50, your gross profit margin is 50%. That’s about the profit margin most retail stores get. You need to do better than that to survive and thrive in your home business.

All of your other expenses such as advertising, overhead, and so on, have to come out of your gross profit before you have any “net profit”. If you sell something for $1.00 and the costs of your product, including all of your other expenses, add up to $.90, you only have ten cents per dollar in net profit (that’s a 10% net profit).

So, for example, if you want to earn $50,000 per year from home with a 10% net profit, you would have to sell $500,000 worth of your product. Wow, that’s a lot of product. Wouldn’t it be better to only have to sell $250,000 worth of product, or even less, to earn your $50,000 income goal?

That’s why you need a business with at least 20% net profit. And, if you really could sell $500,000 worth of products, wouldn’t it be better to have 20% net profit and earn $100,000 per year on that $500,000 in sales? The PERFECT home based business may even enable you to earn up to 40%-60% or more (sometimes more than 90%) in net profit. Yes, really.

At 90% net profit you would only have to sell $55,556 worth of product to earn your $50,000 income. That’s my kind of home business!

• “Profitable” also means a net profit (your “salary”) before taxes of at least $50,000 per year. And $100,000 or more per year would be more like it (unless your goal is to supplement your income to the tune of $500 to $1,000 per month. But, would you turn down $50,000 per year if you didn’t have to work any harder than you did to earn $10,000 per year?).

Your goals may be different than mine and you may be satisfied with lower profits. But, I believe you need to set your goals high, yet at a reasonable level. Then, even if you fall a little short, you will still be very successful.

• Low overhead (less than 5% of sales). Overhead is all the “fixed expenses” of running your business such as computers, printers, other equipment, furniture, office supplies, and office space rental costs.

A home based business is ideal for keeping overhead low, but you still have to be careful to minimize the space needed, the cost for utilities, and the equipment needed to run your business. Don’t go hog wild buying an expensive desk and file cabinets with your first profits. Instead, reinvest those profits in your business and keep your overhead low. You’ll be glad you did.

• Low labor content for manufacturing, assembly, or shipment of the product(s).

You don’t want to spend all of your time assembling and shipping something you sell. Most of your time should be spent on marketing and growing your sales and profits. The PERFECT home business enables you to sell products that involve little or no labor cost to make them or ship them.

• A high average order. Believe it or not, it takes as much effort to sell a $5.00 product as it does to sell a $50.00 product or a $500.00 product, maybe even more effort. So, the PERFECT home based business offers products with a high perceived value and a price well above $20.00. The exception is when you want to sell a low priced product, or even give something away, just to get customers added to your e-mail list so you can sell them other more expensive items later.

• Low initial investment required (less than $1,000 preferred). I don’t know about you, but business opportunities that require $5,000, or $25,000, or more to start scare me a little, unless the return is well worth the risk. There aren’t too many people that even have that kind of money to invest in a business. Why not find the PERFECT home based business that only requires $1,000 or less to get started, perhaps even a few hundred dollars?

• Small inventory with rapid turnover, or no inventory required. Imagine your garage or basement stacked from floor to ceiling with products waiting for someone to buy them. Yuk! Much better to fill each order as it is received without having any inventory in your home, or at least a very small inventory. The PERFECT home based business will allow you to do that.

• Repeat or backend sales potential. One of the highest marketing costs is the cost of getting a new customer. If that customer buys your product over and over from you (repeat sales of a consumable product or a monthly membership fee, for example), or if the new customer buys other products from you later (backend sales), you can dramatically increase your sales and profit. This is a very important ingredient in the recipe for a successful home based business.